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He said the EU would not itself forcibly send people back to Libya but instead uses the Libyan coastguard to do the dirty work.

"It is time for this hypocrisy to end and for the European Union to find other ways to protect its border," he said.

The EU has been training the Libyan coastguard to pluck people from the sea and ship them back to the country. But people returned risk murder, rape, and slavery at any number of detention camps, some which are run by armed militia groups.

A EU-funded programme from the International Organization for Migration is sending others back to their home countries. A similar effort by the UN refugee agency is dispatching people from Libya to Niger as part of an eventual resettlement programme towards European countries.

But the EU's sea rescue containment policy, which is broadly led by the Italian government, has caused untold suffering for people returned to the war-torn country.

Similar outspoken condemnations have been voiced over the past few months from the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Doctors without Borders, and others.

Meanwhile, the EU's efforts to reform internal asylum policy laws have been peppered with anti-migrant rhetoric. Such discourse has become more common and more mainstream among several governments.

Poland's government has seized control of the judiciary, cracked down on civil society, and restricted access to emergency contraception. Warsaw's move against the courts triggered the EU commission to launch sanctions.

The UN migration agency (IOM) had planned to help return and reintegrate 5,000 people from Libya to their home countries, but ended up aiding 20,000 in 2017. The extra demand has piled on the pressure.

Turkey's refusal to hand over personal data of Syrian refugees means the European Commission and the European Court of Auditors are unable to fully trace "from cradle to grave" over €1bn spent to help them.